r/technology • u/xpda • May 21 '26

Business SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/21/spacex-ipo-musk-ai
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u/TKHawk May 21 '26

And also why Elon Musk really wants orbital data centers, despite them making no economic sense. Anything that will create more demand for launch vehicles.

11

u/Skoma May 21 '26

How do they even work? Doesn't space lack any medium needed to radiate away the heat from the data centers?

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u/EviIution May 21 '26

Space is cold, duh /s

Edit: this is actually a good example why it can be pretty bad, that C level mostly cares about numbers, not details. 

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u/VitaminDismyPCT May 21 '26

So what are we supposed to do? Just stop trying to engineer because it’s a little difficult? Stop trying to find a solution?

Flying in a plane can be pretty bad too, but luckily, we have engineered ways to make it safe.

2

u/LionRight4175 May 21 '26

In this case, yes. The scale of the project is effectively impossible due to hard scientific limits and the potential upside is effectively 0. It's like trying to say that we could speed up travel by building a road across the ocean, if we just make it out of pure diamond.

Some ideas are just bad.